Mersenne Digest Thursday, February 8 2001 Volume 01 : Number 814
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 15:15:29 -0600
From: "Levi Broderick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: [screen saver]
There's a rather good freeware screen saver written by Gianpaolo Bottin
called GPhotoShow. It's just a slide show with transitions and provides a
*lot* of free CPU time in between the pictures -- I run it along with
Prime95 on this computer (450 pII) and there is no noticeable slowdown in
either program on any priority setting. This could suffice unless a person
wanted a GIMPS display integrated into the screen saver, though I'm not sure
at all what there would be to display. Just throwing this out to the list.
:)
~ Levi
http://www.bottin.com/gpshow.htm
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 10:38 PM
Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: idea for a new prime95 version
> Excellent idea, Russ. I was discussing with Like Welsh the problem of
people
> attached to their killer screensavers, and as he pointed out:
>
> "But maybe they'd watch pic of their kids/dog/vacation instead? The
> *particular* screensaver I was thinking of was the Photo Slide Show
variety.
> Slap an image on the screen, wait 15 seconds, fade out, display another.
> Lots of free CPU time between pics."
>
> Certainly it won't work for everybody, but I'm sure there would be a lot
of
> takers. Now, anybody know how to write such a thing? Could be released
with
> the prime95/NT software or as a seperate item to be downloaded from the
same
> site.
>
> Steve Harris
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 21:44:31 +0000
From: Gareth Randall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: [screen saver]
Dear All,
Let's face it, why should people who are primarily interested in mathematical
computation divert their time to writing rather unimpressive screen savers? There are
already plenty of programmers out there who can do that job better!
So...
Simply have an online list of "recommended" / "approved" / "suitable" screensavers.
No-one has to write anything new. We just test those which already exist, and analyse
what resource demands they make in terms of CPU usage, RAM access, process image size
etc. Such a list can then allow contributors to select their preferred screensaver,
and avoids introducing extra development complications.
Yours,
======= Gareth Randall =======
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 18:30:01 -0500
From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: GIMPS & SETI@Home Popularity
> Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 20:05:45 -0500
> From: "Joshua Zelinsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Mersenne: Misc Stuff.
>
> A few minor comments.
*snip*
> 5. One reason SETI is more popular is that they seem to have good media
> relations. Even if we could get a small mention of GIMPS in some non-math
> publication, the effect could be enormous. The Science Section of the NYT
> would be really amazing. Any thoughts?
Long ago I got some local media coverage: http://getty.net/gimps/polec/
but I did not see any enormous GIMPS participation leaps locally....
I would have to agree that SETI is definitely more popular because it is "sexy".
- -Marc
Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/
Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University School of Dentistry
Phone: 215-707-8192 Fax: 215-707-2208 New Dental School Room 311
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 17:40:54 -0600
From: "Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: [screen saver]
Levi, does that GPhotoShow allow someone to use their own pictures? That's
exactly what I was talking about. If so please let me know where I can get
it.
Some of you seem to misunderstand what I am getting at. I'm sure most
serious contributors don't want a screensaver (I detest them), but in a
situation where a friend or co-worker lets you install Prime95 on their PC
but just HAS to have one (especially a really slow one), I would like to
give them an option which:
#1 - is Prime95 friendly and
#2 - is easy to convince them to use.
The "personal photo slide show" fits both of those criteria wonderfully. I
know there are a lot of freeware screensavers available, and I know a lot of
them don't hog cpu cycles too badly, but if this is the best one for both
reasons above then we should make it available to those who can use it. I am
losing literally hundreds of P90 hours a day to screensavers but I can't
tell my friends not to run them because they'll just tell me to remove
Prime95 from their PC and that's even worse! You should all know by now that
there are a lot of people running Prime95 who couldn't care less about it,
but will let it run if someone asks.
OK so I'm anal-retentive about optimization. Sorry :-)
Steve
- -----Original Message-----
From: Levi Broderick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: Mersenne: [screen saver]
>There's a rather good freeware screen saver written by Gianpaolo Bottin
>called GPhotoShow. It's just a slide show with transitions and provides a
>*lot* of free CPU time in between the pictures -- I run it along with
>Prime95 on this computer (450 pII) and there is no noticeable slowdown in
>either program on any priority setting. This could suffice unless a person
>wanted a GIMPS display integrated into the screen saver, though I'm not
sure
>at all what there would be to display. Just throwing this out to the list.
>:)
>
>~ Levi
>
>http://www.bottin.com/gpshow.htm
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 10:38 PM
>Subject: Re: Mersenne: Re: idea for a new prime95 version
>
>
>> Excellent idea, Russ. I was discussing with Like Welsh the problem of
>people
>> attached to their killer screensavers, and as he pointed out:
>>
>> "But maybe they'd watch pic of their kids/dog/vacation instead? The
>> *particular* screensaver I was thinking of was the Photo Slide Show
>variety.
>> Slap an image on the screen, wait 15 seconds, fade out, display another.
>> Lots of free CPU time between pics."
>>
>> Certainly it won't work for everybody, but I'm sure there would be a lot
>of
>> takers. Now, anybody know how to write such a thing? Could be released
>with
>> the prime95/NT software or as a seperate item to be downloaded from the
>same
>> site.
>>
>> Steve Harris
>
>_________________________________________________________________________
>Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 01:34:36 +0100
From: "Yves Gallot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: Mersenne Digest V1 #813
> >For now, it looks to me like GIMPS is the most reliable way of looking
> >for primes. Does anyone on the list have a view on this?
>
> Both are quite reliable methods for finding primes. One is good at
> finding good sized primes, the other good at finding record primes.
> BTW, the Proth program and OpenPFGW program could be used to find
> world-record primes. They are less than half as efficient as prime95 -
> but you get to test numbers that are much smaller than the M12000000
> currently being assigned by Primenet.
The best candidates are not the numbers of the form k.2^n+/-1 but the
numbers of the form b^(2^n)+1 (Generalized Fermat Numbers). Like for
Mersenne numbers, we can use a DWT which computes directly x^2 (mod b^N+1).
Then if we select carefully the ranges for b, the computation time to test
the probable primality of a GFN is the same than the test of a Mersenne
number with the Lucas-Lehmer test.
The current version of Proth.exe implements this algorithm: I ran a bench on
a PIII 600 and it is as fast as Prime95 up to about 10^6 digits and is about
30% slower for 12,000,000 digits.
An operation with a GFN of 3,000,000 digits is about 4 times faster than an
operation with a Mersenne number of 12,000,000 digits and the number of
operations to compute to test a number 4 times smaller is divided by 4. And
smaller is the number, larger is the probability to find a prime.
Yves
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 19:17:25 -0800
From: Luke Welsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Embedding Prime95 inside a ScreenSaver
I've been having offline discussion with Steve.....
Some people (I know one admin) don't want Prime95 to run unless the
machine is *really* idle. These people like a screensaver to run when,
in their minds, the PC is idle. And there is no way to change their
minds. The machines are theirs. Period. End Of Discussion.
A version of Prime95 could be embedded/hidden inside a screensaver.
The Photo Album screensaver (GPhotoShow) seems to be a great candidate.
We might approach the author(s) of GPhotoShow and ask them to add
hooks to George's code.
To be perfectly clear, I'm saying that only one program runs: the
GPhotoShow/Prime95 hybrid, not one copy of Prime95 and one copy
of GPhotoShow.
There must be other ScreenSavers we could investigate.
- --Luke
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 23:55:25 +0100
From: "Yves Gallot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: Mersenne Digest V1 #813
>> but you get to test numbers that are much smaller than the M12000000
>> currently being assigned by Primenet.
>
>An operation with a GFN of 3,000,000 digits is about 4 times faster than an
>operation with a Mersenne number of 12,000,000 digits and the number of
>operations to compute to test a number 4 times smaller is divided by 4. And
>smaller is the number, larger is the probability to find a prime.
Sorry, M12000000 is a 3,600,000 digit number: then I should have written
An operation with a GFN of 2,500,000 digits is about 30 % faster than an
operation with a Mersenne number of 3,600,000 digits and the number of
operations which should be computed to test the GFN is divided by 1.44.
And smaller is the number, larger is the probability to find a prime (in
this case it is also multiply by 1.44).
Yves
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 00:56:58 -0600
From: "Jeramy Ross" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: Re: idea for a new prime95 version
From: "Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*snip*
Could be released with the prime95/NT software or as a seperate item to be
downloaded from the same site.
Steve Harris
*snip*
I'd rather the seperate item bit. That would allow those who wanted such a
beast to install it at their will, and those of us whom dislike the idea of
having a screensaver taking *any* cycles away from prime95 can stick with
the good ol' interface we have grown to love. ;-)
Jeramy Ross
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------------------------------
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 18:30:01 -0500
From: "Marc Getty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: GIMPS & SETI@Home Popularity
> Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2001 20:05:45 -0500
> From: "Joshua Zelinsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Mersenne: Misc Stuff.
>
> A few minor comments.
*snip*
> 5. One reason SETI is more popular is that they seem to have good media
> relations. Even if we could get a small mention of GIMPS in some non-math
> publication, the effect could be enormous. The Science Section of the NYT
> would be really amazing. Any thoughts?
Long ago I got some local media coverage: http://getty.net/gimps/polec/
but I did not see any enormous GIMPS participation leaps locally....
I would have to agree that SETI is definitely more popular because it is "sexy".
- -Marc
Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/
Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University School of Dentistry
Phone: 215-707-8192 Fax: 215-707-2208 New Dental School Room 311
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 16:50:51 +0100
From: chris lueders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mersenne: popularity and design
hi,
as we are just discussing the embedding of prime95 in a screensaver i
wanted to share a thought with you:
one thing which i noticed as i saw SETI running on a friend's machine
was that it has a very nicely designed user interface that just 'looks
cool'. i don't recall if it displayed a lot of useful data, but it
'looked scientific'.
now look at prime95. i know, i know, this is some mathematics project
etc. but as i had to notice with my own company selling our own
shareware product: people often don't care about what things really do.
they look at it and think 'this is cool' or (as it was in our case) they
said 'your product looks boring' and they didn't _felt_ like useing it.
what i am suggesting is, let somebody design or propose a cool,
scientific design. something that makes people think they are working
on some very top-notch NASA, government, KGB whatever _exciting_
project. i know this takes time to design, time to code and bytes in
the executable. but i am very sure this will pay in more and more
excitied users. primes have the stigma of beeing boring math stuff. we
must make clear that it is exciting math stuff! even if it has "only"
an exciting skin.
we could display:
- - historical data of the processor time prime used (the last 15 minutes
or whatever) as a graph
- - overall GIMPS performance graph (download it from primenet every day)
(with estimates?)
- - my five cent to GIMPS (percentage of LL tests, factors found etc.)
- - chances of finding a prime in my range, in all of GIMPS, in the next n
days...
- - time to next milestone, etc.
... just to name what comes to my mind right now.
of course we would like to add a menu choice to have prime look and feel
like always. but i guess the majority would like to use the new
interface (me too, i must confess). and we could make it work like a
screensaver, too. i have some sample code from MS here, it's not really
that hard.
what do you think?
/chris/
[- http://www.cfos.de -- cFos DSL/ISDN/ATM driver -]
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------------------------------
Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 22:03:29 -0000
From: "Brian J. Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mersenne: [screen saver]
On 6 Feb 2001, at 17:40, Steve wrote:
[... snip ...]
> Some of you seem to misunderstand what I am getting at. I'm sure most
> serious contributors don't want a screensaver (I detest them), but in a
> situation where a friend or co-worker lets you install Prime95 on their PC
> but just HAS to have one (especially a really slow one), I would like to
> give them an option which:
> #1 - is Prime95 friendly and
> #2 - is easy to convince them to use.
> The "personal photo slide show" fits both of those criteria wonderfully.
[... snip ...]
Well, I, for one, am in complete agreement with this!
I think maybe we need to do two things:
(a) continue to provide the existing "console" version of Prime95,
which will run all the time - but also document which screen savers
are "reccomended for use" with it; perhaps, if some shareware
products are suitable, we could mention them specifically in the
Prime95 documentation i.e. provide free publicity for the author -
the payback for us is, of course, that we get more people to run
Prime95;
(b) provide something like a slide show screensaver which shows in
rotation all the files in a directory, and runs the Mersenne Prime
client only whilst the screensaver is active. We could also provide a
few free pictures e.g. portraits of Mersenne, George & the four GIMPS
prime discoverers, and anything else Mersenne prime related we can
turn up. It would probably be nice to put the program title, the
exponent being tested and the current iteration on a status line at
the bottom of the display.
A couple more "geekish" ideas for something a screensaver might do
(though I must admit a user-definable slide show would probably be
more appealing to most users):
(a) a sort of "marquee" displaying the decimal expansion of M6972593 -
or alternatively the actual number the program is testing;
(b) similar but displaying the last hexit of the residual actually
calculated in the current iteration.
Both of these could update the screen display each time an iteration
completes.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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------------------------------
End of Mersenne Digest V1 #814
******************************
